FORMER state parliamentary speaker Tony McGrady reduced a Parliament employee to tears with a verbal tirade on Thursday night after she failed to recognise him.

The Courier-Mail can reveal security officers descended on the Parliamentary Annexe foyer at the height of the incident, which witnesses described as “ugly”, “shocking”, “disgusting” and a “disgrace”.

Mr McGrady insisted he was the victim of a rude employee, saying the altercation spoiled his dinner with Opposition Leader Annastacia Palaszczuk and her deputy Tim Mulherin in Parliament’s Stranger’s Dining Room.

The matter, involving the former Labor MP and now Mount Isa Mayor, has been reported to Clerk of Parliament Neil Laurie and Speaker Fiona Simpson.

Numerous visitors entering Parliament to attend a Queensland Taxi Council function witnessed the incident about 6.30pm.

“She had asked him to provide, as they do for everyone, proof of ID,” one spectator told The Courier-Mail.

“And he’s just gone off and refused. Terms such as ‘Don’t you know who I am’ and ‘How can you be so stupid?’ were used.”

The witness said Mr McGrady had “grabbed her at some point”, reducing the woman to tears and prompting security to intervene.

“There were probably about five security guards around him. It looked like they were trying to remove him at one stage,” he said.

The witness said onlookers were “shocked”.

Mr McGrady conceded there was an incident but rejected outright the suggestion that he touched the woman at any stage.

“Honestly, I swear on my wife’s life, I swear on the Bible, I didn’t touch the woman at all,” he said.

Mr McGrady said he got upset after copping “attitude” from the woman when she demanded to see his identification.

“I said to her, ‘I was a Member here for 17 years, a minister most of that time and a former speaker’,” he said. “And she said ‘Well I don’t know that did I’.”